Report Pegs Roots of Arab Knowledge Gap

Nov. 9

AnalysisBy Fawaz A. Gerges

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the idea that Arab culture and
religion are responsible for stifling progress, and tolerance toward
"the other," in the Arab/Muslim world has gained currency in the United
States. According to this idea, Arabs are incapable of embracing
modernity and reforming their stagnant societies.

Further, only shock tactics would wake the Arab/Muslim world from
its political slumber. In a sense, the Iraq war was
to serve as a laboratory, a case study of forced transformation and
adaptation of the Arab region to the modern world and Western
democracy.

But this view of Arab culture and religion aren't quite accurate,
says this year's Arab Human Development Report, commissioned by the
United Nations Development Program and written by more than 40 Arab
scholars.

Knowledge Gap

The report, released this week, stresses that the
existential crisis facing the Arab world has less to do with religion
and culture and more with three key development challenges — deficits
in political freedom, empowerment of women, and access to knowledge. These challenges stem from attitudes purveyed by repressive
governments and conservative religious groups, but they are not innate
to Arab or Muslim thought.

The report (last year's version was criticized by Arab officials and
radicals alike) said in the area of freedoms the "challenges may have
become graver." Extreme security measures and policies adopted by the
United States and Arab governments as part of the "war on terrorism"
have led to the erosion of civil and political liberties of
Arabs/Muslims.

But the focus of this year's report is on the growing knowledge gap
between the Arab region and the rest of the world, and the urgent need
to build a "knowledge society." Data in the report tell a sad story of
continued stagnation and decline in many areas of knowledge
production.

The mass media are the most important agents for the public diffusion
of knowledge. Yet Arab countries have lower information media to
population ratios than other nations. More damaging is that the Arab
media operate in a harsh environment that restricts freedom of
expression and most media institutions are state owned.

Numbers

Moreover, while the Arab countries represent 5 percent of world
population, they produce only 1.1 percent of the world's books. True,
they produce many religious pamphlets, but relatively few books that
contribute to critical knowledge.

Translation (in its heyday, Muslim culture was singularly
responsible, through translation, for preserving classical ideas) is an important channel for
disseminating ideas and communicating with the rest of the world. Yet
there are more books translated annually in one European country,
Spain, than in all 22 Arab states.

There are just 18 computers per
1,000 per people in the Arab world, compared with 78 per thousand
globally. Only 1.6 percent of the population has Internet access.

Similarly alarming is the high rates of illiteracy among women in
some of the less-developed Arab countries. Many children still do not
have access to basic education. But the most important challenge
facing Arab education is its declining quality. College graduates tend
to be ill-prepared to compete in the modern world. Those who are tend
to be predisposed to emigrate in search of economic opportunities and
political freedom.